News Release

"Shoecabbage" Goes Crossover Crazy

KANSAS CITY, Mo.  (01/27/2004)  What do Lennie Peterson ("The Big Picture"), Mike Baldwin ("Cornered") and 10 other cartoonists have in common? They're all guest artists whose work will appear in "Shoecabbage" during the month of February.

"Shoecabbage," a syndicated online comic panel, has fun with words in other languages that sound like words in English. It appears every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on www.ucomics.com, a consumer comics site operated by uclick, the Kansas City-based Internet content provider owned by Andrews McMeel Universal.

"I've always loved the idea of characters from one cartoon world crossing over and visiting another," says Teresa Dowlatshahi who co-creates "Shoecabbage" with cartoonist David Stanford, who's stepping aside for a month so guest artists can visit. "Hosting so many crossovers in a row," notes Dowlatshahi, "is like getting to be Oprah for a while -- or in the case of Lennie, Jerry Springer."

Lennie Peterson ("The Big Picture") will kick off the fun wearing only a loincloth. In addition to Peterson and Baldwin, the 12 cartoonists who will actually draw art to illustrate the copy in "Shoecabbage" are Oliver Christianson ("Revilo" of Hallmark Cards), Ken Cursoe ("Tiny Sepuku"), Charles Barsotti (of The New Yorker), Dan Thompson ("Lost Sheep"), Stu Rees (syndication attorney/ "Stu's Views"), Charlie Podrebarac ("Fat Cats" and "Cowtown"), Steve Moore ("In the Bleachers"), Mike Donovan ("MikeDonovan.com"), Hilary Price ("Rhymes with Orange") and M. Thomas Inge (comics historian).

"Shoecabbage" hosted its first crossover with Glenn McCoy ("The Duplex") in October 2003. "Glenn got me hooked," claims Dowlatshahi.

And Dowlatshahi isn't the only one hooked. Tom Inge, a pioneer in the field of popular culture and comics studies, and the author of numerous books and articles related to the comics, including "Anything Can Happen in a Comic Strip" (a study of self-referentiality in the comics) is an expert on the subject of crossovers.

Says Dr. Inge, "Crossovers demonstrate that there is a wonderful world out there where comic characters and artists get together, kick back, and share a beer -- except, of course, when the Family Circus kids are around."

Dowlatshahi invited Inge to be a special guest artist for "Shoecabbage," even though Inge admitted that he hadn't picked up a drawing pen in over forty years. "I was asked to draw a tree," he says. "But drawing trees can be tricky. They can end up looking like elephants."

Creator(s):

Contact(s): Kathie Kerr

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